In the first half, the CRR Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Nil Venditti, accompanies the Italian-American violinist Francesca Dego in Sibelius’s Violin Concerto in D minor. After the interval, the orchestra will play Manuel de Falla’s The Three-Cornered Hat, the Spanish name for which is El sombrero de tres picos.
The three-movement Violin Concerto in D minor, Opus 47, by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), was written in 1904 and revised the following year. The first performance (in Helsinki) was a complete disaster: Sibelius had only just finished the work in time for the premiere, and the violinist he had engaged to play the solo part was unable to cope with its considerable technical difficulty, having moreover had inadequate time to prepare. However, this concerto – the only one the composer ever wrote – has since become a cornerstone of the violin repertoire. The extended cadenza in the first movement, a particularly gruelling test for the soloist, takes on the character of a development section. The finale, which follows a lyrical second movement, was described by the musicologist Donald Tovey, author of Essays in Musical Analysis, as a ‘polonaise for polar bears’. About the work as whole Tovey was more gracious, declaring that he had ‘not met a more original, a more masterly, and a more exhilarating work than the Sibelius violin concerto’.
Violinist Francesca Dego, whose website informs us that she is ‘celebrated for her versatility, compelling interpretations and flawless technique’, has made a large number of recordings with various orchestras. The most recent of these featured the violin concertos of Busoni and Brahms (with the BBC Symphony Orchestra); released in March 2024, it won the prestigious Franco Abbiati Prize, awarded annually by the Italian National Association of Music Critics. Prior to this, she had made a recording of the complete Mozart concertos (with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra) that was awarded five stars by BBC Music Magazine.
Although his output was relatively small, the composer and pianist Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) is regarded as one of the most important Spanish musicians of the first half of the 20th century along with Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909), Enrique Granados (1867-1916) and the guitarist Francisco Tárrega (1852-1909). In 1916-1917, de Falla composed the music for a pantomime entitled El corregidor y la molinera (‘The Magistrate and the Miller’s Wife’). In 1916 he had been introduced to Sergei Diaghilev, the impresario of the Ballets russes, by Igor Stravinsky during the ballet company’s first visit to Spain. Subsequently, Diaghilev requested – and received – permission from de Falla to use the pantomime music in his future productions.
Accordingly, de Falla set to work on the music for a ballet version of El corregidor y la molinera – incorporating the techniques of Spanish dance as opposed to those of classical ballet – that was to be entitled The Three-Cornered Hat. At the same time, the Russian ballet dancer and choreographer Léonide Massine and the teenage Spanish dancer Félix Fernández García (his advisor on Spanish dance) worked on the choreography, while Pablo Picasso developed the set design and costumes. The first performance took place at the Alhambra Theatre in London in July 1919. Shortly before the opening night there was a dramatic bust-up as a result of which García was arrested; he was later declared insane and confined to an asylum.
The story of The Three-Cornered Hat, which consists of eight main sections divided into two acts, concerns a magistrate’s infatuation with a miller’s faithful wife. Traditional Andalusian folk music is used throughout.
